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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Baptism?',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/01/31.jpg" alt="Small plants frosted over" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		Before the missionaries arrived, I read more of their Book of Mormon.
		The main thing of note in what I read was that the wicked will be cast off forever.
		Not forgiven.
		The Mormons preach that Yahweh is a forgiving god, but that&apos;s not what their book says.
		The book also talks about a vision in which the seer of it sees a &quot;virgin&quot.
		Um.
		You can&apos;t see virginity, so how does the seer know this is a virgin when he sees her?
		This virgin is then stated to be the mother of the messiah, the virgin Mary.
		She&apos;s said to be exceedingly fair and white though.
		Why would she be white though?
		Isn&apos;t this all going on in the middle east?
		Next, the seer witnesses the future deeds of the messiah, healing the sick by driving away the devils and unclean spirits that are causing disease.
		We know in modern society that devils and unclean spirits aren&apos;t the cause of disease though.
		In other words, this is more proof that it&apos;s made up.
	</p>
	<p>
		We didn&apos;t cover any new lessons or anything this week.
		We mainly instead discussed the messages I&apos;ve been getting from the Book of Mormon, the lack of responses to my prayers, and that method of getting responses to prayers.
		None of what they said in regards to the missionaries&apos; justification of what the Boom of Mormon says seemed valid.
		For example, they wrote off the death threat Yahweh made to Joseph Smith.
		However, I did get some interesting information about prayers.
		They say that for prayers to receive answers, there needs to be intent to act based on that answer.
		That means you can&apos;t pray for truth and enlightenment, for example.
		I can&apos;t pray for Yahweh to show me he&apos;s actually real, and I can&apos;t pray for an answer as to whether the things taught by religion are real.
		Instead, I have to pray about some upcoming action I&apos;ll take.
		And I need to intend to change my action based on the prayer&apos;s answer.
	</p>
	<p>
		I don&apos;t know if I wrote about this, but before I went in to ask about vasectomy effectiveness, I mentioned it several times in my prayers.
		I know Mormons are big into procreation, so I told Yahweh what I was planning and asked if there were any objections.
		Had he responded, I would of course have cancelled.
		That said, Mormons also aren&apos;t big into queers, and the options I gave Yahweh were that I&apos;d either exclusively date males or I&apos;d get the vasectomy.
		I never had intent to create more people, and never presented that as an option.
		That could be the reason for the lack of response.
		However, in my defence, creating more people is to sentence them to one day die and be gone forever.
		I need something a little more substantial than faith to levy that kind of curse on someone.
		If there is no afterlife, creating more people is unforgivable.
		I&apos;m going to need even the smallest sliver of hard evidence of either a god or an afterlife before I even consider doing something so terrible.
		I cannot make such a choice based on prayer alone.
	</p>
	<p>
		So anyway, I guess to get circumstantial evidence of Yahweh, as hard evidence isn&apos;t available, I need to find actions I can perform that I can give up the decision to chance, in case Yahweh isn&apos;t real and any feelings I do or do not get from prayer are only my own internal thoughts and not divine inspiration.
		I can&apos;t pray about things I outright know the right answer to, as I can&apos;t act upon any feelings I get.
		I have to be able to change course on a dime, for it to be something I can pray about.
	</p>
	<p>
		Consequently, the missionaries want me to make two plans.
		First, to come to church this Sunday.
		I see no reason why I can&apos;t make that happen.
		I think my workload is small enough this week that I can pull that off.
		They say that coming to church will be a show of faith, and that&apos;ll put me on the right track toward receiving answer to my prayers and learning that Yahweh does in fact exist.
		Secondly, they want me to plan to get baptised on March 23, but only if I receive answer to prayers asking if I should.
		This intent is supposed to provide the necessary ingredient for a prayer to be answered.
		If there is no god, a baptism isn&apos;t exactly dangerous, so a vague feeling is enough to make such a decision.
		And as I need intent for something to be rightfully included in a prayer, I&apos;ll probably ask about that in all my prayers for the time being, as I&apos;m not sure what other upcoming action I can rightfully make a choice based on vague feelings that may or may not come.
		And all the while, I&apos;m to continue reading the Book of Mormon, which is likewise supposed to bring me closer to Yahweh so prayers may be answered.
	</p>
	<p>
		I can&apos;t learn very well from maps.
		I can read a map, and if there are few enough turns and/or I&apos;m familiar with the area, I can remember the directions for a short time.
		I can&apos;t keep track of or even just understand where something is though unless I&apos;ve been there.
		So after writing down my thoughts on today&apos;s visit, I biked to the address the missionaries gave me for their church.
		It&apos;s actually very close to the area I go to run my Tuesday errands, so it won&apos;t be difficult to get back there on Sunday.
		It&apos;s too far to travel by foot though, so if I go there on the week of my vasectomy, I&apos;ll need to go via bike, which could be hard on my body.
		I was thinking I might pray about that, but I doubt that&apos;s a good idea.
		If there is no god, I could really hurt myself if I decide to go.
		It&apos;s probably best I stay home that week.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I&apos;ve never heard of Web 3.0.
			I guess the Web 2.0 buzzword isn&apos;t enough these days, and a new Web 3.0 buzzword had to be added.
		</p>
		<p>
			You mention Web 2.0 having <code>POST</code>, <code>PUT</code>, <code>GET</code>, and <code>DELETE</code> requests, but all these request types have been available long before Web 2.0 was ever coined.
			In fact, most modern websites don&apos;t even use <code>PUT</code> or <code>DELETE</code> requests any more, and I can&apos;t think of a single Web 2.0 website that ever used them.
			Adding and removing content these days is typically handled through <code>POST</code> requests alone.
			It&apos;s not unheard of to create or remove content via <code>GET</code> requests too, though this is generally considered to be bad practice, and <code>POST</code> requests are preferred for these tasks.
		</p>
		<p>
			You mention $a[VoIP] as well, which isn&apos;t Web 2.0, Web 1.0, or in fact the Web at all.
			The Web is a service that runs on the Internet, while $a[VoIP] is a different service that runs on the Internet.
			Many people these days confuse the terms &quot;Internet&quot; and &quot;Web&quot;, but they&apos;re very different concepts.
			You then go on to mention that the features and services of Web 2.0 you listed aren&apos;t possible without $a[AJAX], but $a[VoIP] doesn&apos;t use $a[AJAX], further showing that $a[VoIP] doesn&apos;t into your definition of Web 2.0.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I felt like I had lost too much time today without having even started on my coursework for the day.
		I&apos;d planned to read four long $a[PDF] files for the course I didn&apos;t write a post for yesterday before actually working on that discussion assignment, and as I write one discussion post per day, that meant I needed to get all that done today.
		I thought I was going to have to skip my $a[EUGLUG] meeting this week to make that happen.
		Thankfully, someone posted in the same discussion board I posted in yesterday, so I was able to simply respond to that instead, pushing back the deadline for the reading assignment by one day.
		It&apos;s a work day, but I thought it should be enough.
		That student didn&apos;t seem to have any idea what they were talking about though, and reading what they wrote was a bit painful.
	</p>
	<p>
		I went through the reading assignment to make a list of the $a[URI]s for my records as well as check any potential normalisations that lead to the same pages (switch <code>http:</code> to <code>https:</code>, remove the <code>www.</code> from the domain ... y&apos;know, the usual), and found the $a[PDF]s they want me to read are a lot longer than I anticipated though.
		I thought it really in my best interest to skip the meeting after all, but then I remembered when the reading assignment&apos;s due.
		It&apos;ll be due the day of the surgery.
		I&apos;ve got the surgery in the morning, so I&apos;ll be stuck at home all day afterwards.
		I might as well read then.
		Back and forth I debated, and eventually still decided to skip the meeting.
		I don&apos;t know if I&apos;ll have any days off from work this week besides today, I&apos;ve got large reading assignments in both courses, and I have commitments later in the week that must be met and will use up my time.
		I&apos;ll just have to skip the $a[EUGLUG] meeting two weeks in a row instead of one.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
